The new normal: How to talk to your kids about gay parents, by a gay dad

Imagine you’re at the train station, taking your kids into the city to see the Lion King. A man steps off the 6:16 from Grand Central, and two toddlers run up to him shouting, “Daddy! Daddy!” He gives out two hugs and about a thousand kisses and tells them how much he missed them while he was at work. You’ve witnessed scenes like this many times, but as always, your heart melts. Then the dad stands up, walks a little further down the platform and kisses… another man…

This is the story of my life. I am a gay dad, and I confuse children.

The author goes on to suggest some ways that parents might teach their children about gay families—how to speak in ways that normalize gay parenting instead of stigmatizing it. The advice that he gives is just awful, and you can read the rest of it here.

I didn’t get angry when I read this story. I wasn’t mad. More than anything, I was just grieved. Stories like this one are but a sign of the times. We are a people of unclean lips and we live among a people of unclean lips (Isaiah 6:5). It is normal today to call evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20), and so hardly anyone bats an eye anymore when articles like this one appear. Gay parenting comes to us today as “the new normal” with hardly any thought about the massive social revolution it inaugurates with all of its deleterious effects on children and families. If you love your neighbor, then you will love the common good. And this is not good. So we grieve.

There is much more that we might want to say in response to an article like this, but I will just add a few more reflections. As homosexuality and gay marriage have been normalized in our culture, so also has the phenomenon of gay parenting and gay adoption. Gay marriage proponents often argue against traditional marriage by asking, “How does gay marriage hurt heterosexual marriage?” The assumption behind this question is the idea that the definition of marriage is a private matter. This is not true.

There will be a public definition of marriage and it will have public implications. For Christian parents, those implications will begin with how we explain to our children what it means that some of their classmates and friends have two “daddies” or two “mommies.” We will certainly teach our children to love their neighbors, but we will also eventually have to explain to them that some of our neighbors don’t know God and live in sin. In other words, we must address in no uncertain terms the moral dissolution going on around us, and we must define it in biblical terms. This means that we are all going to have to say things to our children that others will consider to be hate speech. But for us it will merely be doing what God has commanded us to do.

Deuteronomy 11:18-2118 You shall therefore impress these words of mine on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. 19 And you shall teach them to your sons, talking of them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you rise up. 20 And you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates, 21 so that your days and the days of your sons may be multiplied on the land which the LORD swore to your fathers to give them, as long as the heavens remain above the earth.

Nothing in the article was shocking to me. Well, one thing was mildly intriguing: He said “You don’t have to pretend half the world is gay.” Now, he went on say that we ought not to attach a value judgment to that. Obviously I disagree with his closing statement, but found it interesting he would say it’s ok to recognize they are a vast minority. My experience (larger than most evangelicals) with the gay community has shown an opinion to the contrary: gays who want people to think they are everywhere, that most people are closeted or have some sort of homoerotic fantasy. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t go there.

Would your grief be different if you changed the scenario to the man kissing a female that you recognize is a divorced woman? Would you lament that you have to tell your children that these people are sinners — that they can’t be members of your church — that your pastor refused to perform their marriage ceremony?

What about two opposite sex parents that take their children to a false church and teach them to worship false gods?

Are children better off being raised by a single parent or no parent all rather than being raised by two parents of the same sex (which can provide more resources than one person)? Are children be better off being raised in a household led by a legally married same-sex couple with all the financial and legal benefits that come with marriage or by two people living together?

I reject the first piece of advice he gives (using the word “gay”). I heard a pastor once say, and I agree, that we shouldn’t let homosexuals hijack a word that means “happy.” They’re lost, confused, shameless, and in the dark; so “happy” really isn’t appropriate to describe them.

I’ve been reading this blog for years and I haven’t seen one post about how the marriage of divorcees is unbiblical and it should be legally banned or how it’s trampling the rights of the ones that want to follow the Bible or how their kids are negatively affected.

Denny has showed time and again a special animosity toward gay people. I have no qualms about him not wanting to roll out the welcome wagon, but he goes the extra mile to do the most he can to try to keep people from living a happy, healthy life just because he believes that that life isn’t happy or healthy as if he is the one to determine that for everyone in the nation.

“I didn’t get angry when I read this story. I wasn’t mad. More than anything, I was just grieved.”
Why don’t you try and sell that to someone who will buy it. Your absolute fury and visceral hatred is obvious to everyone.

Mitch, it’s not hateful to want children to be raised by a mother and a father. In an ideal world, all children would be raised by their own mothers and fathers, but we know that we don’t live in an ideal world. Sometimes one or both parents die. Sometimes one or both parents leave. Sometimes children are conceived out of wedlock to a single parent who courageously supplies all the care and provision for that child. All of those situations are tragic and are not ideal. Study after study shows that children fare better with a mother and a father.

That is why the gay parenting phenomenon is troubling. It assumes that there is no benefit to having both a mother and a father. It’s catches children up into a massive social experiment, and I don’t believe it’s fair to them or in the best interests of the common good. Contrary to what you may think, this concern is not born out of hatred but love.

I didn’t and don’t care to offer an opinion on gay parenting. I was talking about you and how obvious it is that you view gay people with hatred and disgust and that has been the case for most of the nearly 30 years that I’ve known you. It’s no big deal and you have a lot of good christian company in that viewpoint but, hey, don’t DENY it. The quote from your original post in my comment above is a classic “methinks thou doth protest to much” and it’s almost comical how fervently you try to deny it. I’m calling you out on it but didn’t mean anything by it. Heck that’s part of what makes you you. Don’t ever change old friend!

Mitch, I don’t view gay people with hatred and disgust. I know we’ve been over this countless times. Nevertheless, it’s still the case that people can have deep personal moral differences with one another without hating one another. If this isn’t possible, then pluralism and tolerance are not impossible. Moreover, love isn’t possible. But I believe all of these are possible even in the face of these differences.